mind/body

Posts Tagged ‘mind/body’

Minding The Skin We're In : Loving Self Inside and Out

December 30th, 2009

There are some people who eat an orange but don’t really eat it. They eat their sorrow, fear, anger, past, and future. They are not really present, with body and mind united.

Thich Naht Hanh

Mindfulness, as I described in the prior post, can be applied to eating and for some this can be in a life-saving kind of way. Those that suffer from body dysmorphia and issues such as overeating, bulimia, and anorexia have trouble with self-love that is so intense, intimate, and palpable that it invades them from every angle both inside and outside of their physical beings. I have heard people with disordered eating describe a feeling of being detached from their bodies, disconnected from their physical and emotional selves, and a genuine viewpoint of food as “the enemy”.

This kind of disordered eating and contorted life view goes beyond just the everyday guilt over indulging in too much chocolate or sigh of remorse when reading a scale that reveals two more pounds in our weight. Eating when tied with eating disorders becomes inextricably linked with emotion–eating for pain, eating to hide pain, stretching the body’s physical limitations for survival to a masochistic extent becomes more than a preoccupation and turns into a life-threatening compulsion.

The problem with eating when it is tied to emotions, much like any addictive behavior, is that the satisfaction found in food is only temporary and the pseudo-healing only superficial. After deprivation, purging, or over-consumption a person is left not only with the original pains below the surface but also new pangs of guilt and shame. It becomes a vicious cycle and obliterates any chance at eating for enjoyment or looking at food as other than a substance to be despised and obsessed over.

So, as it seems I always find, a discussion about food leads back to issues of trauma, issues of the mind/body connection, and a desperate need for a present-centered perspective on life. To be present in the moment means, at least for one second, to force oneself to shed the pain of the past and focus on where the pain is in the present. In focusing on pain and it’s origins in the present moment there is a way to find the root of unhealthy habits, behaviors and compulsions. If we can focus on how food is making us feel in the moment, as we eat it, there is a way to break that cycle of pain and betrayal within ourselves and with our relationship with food and find what the real pain is below the surface.

Mindfulness, breathwork, and a yogic mindset bring a body/mind connection into work with disordered eating and with any person who might find food or other addictive behaviors as a mask they use to hide from themselves and their inner pain. Through this practice mindfulness and mind/body attunement becomes a gateway to learning the self better. I had a client tell me that she yearned to be a yogi for years of addiction because of the freedom it seemed to hold but after achieving a yogic life she still found an inability to connect with it in a soulful way. Sometimes we have to start with baby steps, the yoga breath, the quiet mind, the present moment and one day at a time to get to a place where a yogic mindset can be fully appreciated.

Whether we are dealing with traumas, addiction, or just emotional pain of any kind there is a struggle to find inner peace and sometimes a feeling of ambiguity in how to get there. Sometimes it begins with small steps of self acceptance, self-reflection, and an ability to eat an orange for the sweetness of its juicy flesh and not for fear, anger, sadness, or any other emotional cause.

Posted in creative therapies, life musings, spirituality, trauma, yoga | Tags: addiction, addictive, anorexia, behavior, body, body dysmorphia, body image, bulimia, disordered eating, food, guilt, inside and out, loving, mind, mind/body, overeating, pain, present moment, present-centered, same, self, thich naht hanh, trauma, unhealthy, yoga |

No Comments »

Affording Enlightenment?

December 9th, 2009

Maybe it is the New Year creeping in, tax season on the horizon, or the fact that my husband and I are having to forgo Christmas presents this year due to low finances, but I found my mind swirling around the fiscally pragmatic today.

Another reason money and money woes are on my mind is that I found this amazing Integrative Mental Health Conference in Phoenix in March with the likes of Andrew Weil, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Amy Weintraub on mind/body healing approaches in mental health–jackpot–and I cannot even conceivable afford to go.

And it makes me wonder, in this shaky economic time, when jobs are not certain and the stock market even less so, how can anyone afford enlightenment? I look at wonderful educational centers like Kripalu and Omega, places where I find enriching workshops weekly that make me salivate cerebrally just thinking of them, but there is no way I could afford the accommodations, airfare, and then coursework costs to attend.

The saddest part yet is that I am a graduate school educated person with a moderately well salaried job (for my field of social work, which is considerably underpaid as a whole). So, if I can’t afford enlightenment, enrichment, and the coursework to a more centered self, more soulful life, deeper yoga practice and life path then what about everyone else?! (Yes, I do believe that moment deserved an exclamation point, please don’t be offended by my virtual shouting).

I received a lovely email from a graduate school social work professor in the midwest last week and we had a rich discussion regarding complementary therapies, yoga as therapeutic, and the potentials for training the young soon-to-be-therapist minds of her students with a curriculum that included yogic practices.

I was so hopeful being able to be a participant in such a discussion. It gave me hope that one day affording enlightenment and having accessable mind/body healing practices will not be just for those few who have the cash for the expenditure of a flight and a long weekend away or even those who can plunk down upwards of $20.00 on a yoga class.

In a world in which mind/body techniques are effectively integrated into therapeutic practice and graduate schools might, conceivably, be churning out eager minds well-versed in mind/body and yogic techniques then this kind of enlightenment, these tools of self-care and self-soothing might just be accessable to everyone. And it could be billable by therapeutic businesses as a therapeutic activity.

Now this day, on a mass scale, may not be tomorrow but I believe steps towards it are happening today. Through motivated and passionate persons like the graduate professor who are willing to impart this learning to a generation of students, with curriculums wide enough to allow for these discussions to be had, in therapeutic workplaces open to trying the programming, and studies on these subjects continuing to bring more efficacy to the field this new journey of healing is beginning.

My hope is for a future in which an affluent benefactor (kidding, well sort of) could fund my dream project: non-profit holistic therapeutic centers that would incorporate mind/body healing, animal-based therapies, and somatic psychotherapies all under one roof. The more people I meet with like-minded passions the more I feel this hope may one day be attainable, whether for me or for someone else. In the meantime I guess I have to hope for a temporary benefactor to pay for me to go to the Integrative Mental Health Conference, or just resign myself to the fact that for now I just can’t afford enlightenment.

Stay tuned for the second part of YOGIC EQUUS at the end of the week.

Also, much thanks to www.itsallyogababy.com for listing me among her favorite posts of 2009 and to http://www.cirkla.com/newsletters/112209.htm for listing my blog among the many wonderful yogic bloggers of the blogosphere!

Posted in creative therapies, spirituality, trauma, yoga | Tags: affording, Amy Weintraub, Andrew Weil, enlightenment, fiscal, graduate professor, healing, Integrative Mental Health Conference, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Kripalu, mind/body, money, Omega, School of Social Work, social work, therapies, yoga |

4 Comments »

Welcome!

I am a trauma therapist and survivor of trauma. I believe in the potential in all of us not just to survive but thrive in living. I am yoga practitioner and teacher, writer and reader, animal lover and animal-assisted therapist. I believe for every challenge the world hands us we are also given a solution; sometimes subtle and other times clearly shown. The hope of this site is to bring a tiny piece of hope to anyone searching for it and maybe light a spark that will continue to burn in each person's recovery from pain and return to the truest part of the self.

Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘mind/body’

Minding The Skin We're In : Loving Self Inside and Out

Affording Enlightenment?